The Project Gutenberg eBook of The way out
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Title: The way out
Author: Richard Rein Smith
Illustrator: Richard Kluga
Release date: October 19, 2023 [eBook #71910]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1958
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OUT ***
THE WAY OUT
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by RICHARD KLUGA
How do you kill a man without killing him?
Unless that question could be answered, Earth
would lose the war, and every Earthman would die!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity June 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The room was a maze of mirrors that reflected his nightmare image.
At first he had tried to close his eyes but found that they had done
something to them. He could not close them and was forced to look at
the thing in the hundreds of mirrors, seeing it from all angles.
He had tried to sleep--thinking that, if asleep, he would not see the
mirrors and himself. But they had injected drugs into his body--drugs
that made sleep impossible except when they wanted him to sleep. A
human body had to have a minimum of sleep; they knew what that minimum
was and gave it to him when they wanted him to have it.
But even sleep was no release. During those first days, he discovered
that a man unable to close his eyes will _see_ while he sleeps. And in
every dream the mirrors and the nightmare were there, superimposed upon
the dream as two negatives placed one upon another. If he dreamed that
he was a child again, playing in the fields and chasing rabbits, the
nightmare image was there, superimposed upon the dream. If he dreamed
that he was a teen-ager, walking Betty home from the movies and holding
her soft hand in his, it was there--hovering in the air around them. No
matter what he dreamed, it was there.
He found that there was one relief from the nightmare and only one.
They had left his right arm intact. _In the event_, he thought, _that
I give in, I will be able to write the answers they want to know._
But that was not a complete relief. To stare at the smoothness and
perfection of flesh on his right arm for long periods was to admit that
the rest of his body was....
They were clever with pain, he thought. Pain, he had realized during
those first days, was a monumental thing to a man. Pain was the first
sensation experienced by a man: the slap of the doctor's hand and the
first breath of air in lungs unaccustomed to breathing. And pain was
the very last sensation that a man experienced: the pain of death.
Crowded in between those two sensations that represented a person's
life span, pain was the dominant impetus. What drove a man to do
anything except the impetus of pain and the instinct to avoid pain? A
man did a million things to avoid physical pain. To avoid hunger pains,
a man would eat; to avoid the pain of coldness, a man would light a
fire; to avoid aching muscles, a man would make a wheel to carry his
burden; to lessen that burden, a man would split an atom.... And a man
did a million other things to avoid emotional pain. To avoid the pain
of loneliness, a man would make friends; to avoid the pain of boredom,
a man would play a game; to avoid the pain of ugliness, a man would
create beauty....
Not an unpleasant reality, he realized. Not unpleasant because it was
necessary. Nothing in the universe moved unless a force pushed or
pulled it. A man unable to sense physical or emotional pain would do
_nothing_. There would be nothing to push him. As wind moved clouds,
pain moved man.
The sight of his body was not exactly painful to him. They had not
disfigured him; they had only _changed_ him. To disassociate him from
his body, no doubt. What they had done to him many would call an
"atrocity," he realized. But, in a war, every time one soldier killed
another, it was an "atrocity"--one man had taken the life of another.
_They_ had a job to do and they were doing it.
Successfully, he knew. When they came the next time, he would tell them
what they wanted to know. _Want to know where Fort Meade is located on
Earth? Give me a map and I'll show you. How many soldiers do we have
in the mountain range a hundred miles from here? I'll give you my best
estimate. I'll tell you anything you want!_
Pain was the impetus to push a man, he knew. They had pushed him and
pushed him. Doing their job. And they had pushed him far enough. A man
was not linked to other men and his nation and his world by tangible
threads. A man was separate and distinct; a man's body was a world in
itself. He had been pushed into his world by pain. Somewhere--beyond
the wall of pain that came or vanished when they wanted--somewhere, he
had friends, an army, a world called Earth. But they didn't matter.
_His_ world mattered....
And, oddly, he wasn't afraid of pain any more. It was just a thing, a
thing to be avoided in any way. And he wasn't to be pitied. They had
_changed_ him. Sergeant Chester Gregg wasn't a man any more. He was
something that could be added to and subtracted from, a pliable thing
that could be prodded and molded, an object that could be pushed this
way and that way....
* * * * *
Murphy raised his head. He could tell from the flashes of artillery
fire that they were surrounded. Antarian artillery had a purplish flash
of light that their own guns did not have. And he could see: in every
direction there was an occasional flash of purplish light. The flashes
formed a circle--a circle around them.
He lowered himself into the foxhole.
"What?" Hank inquired.
"Surrounded."
"Are you sure?" Hank crouched in the semi-darkness as if about to
pounce on something.
"Damn it, if you don't believe me, _take a look_!"
Hank hesitated. He was a tall, lanky person with red hair and boyish
freckles. He had an awkward, self-conscious manner, and despite his
powerful body, the freckles and manner made others think of him as a
boy rather than a man. He was eighteen and combat had hardened his
muscles without hardening his appearance. "I believe you," he said.
"Do you think we'll get out?"
"Hard to tell. Maybe."
Murphy leaned back and looked up at the dark sky. It was filled with
stars, stars that twinkled, and intermingled with them were other
points of light that were not stars. They were atomic explosions, and
unlike the stars, they did not twinkle. An atomic explosion in outer
space, without the pressure of atmosphere, expanded tremendously. When
it reached the limit of expansion, it faded, and watching a battle in
outer space was like watching a maze of tiny blinking lights. Murphy
watched those tiny blips of light every night. One night, if he lived
long enough, there would be no blips of light and that would mean that
one side was beaten.
They were fighting and dying on Antares but their battle was a
secondary one. It was the battle in outer space that would win the war.
If the Antarians won that battle, then every Earthman on Antares would
die because there would be no more supplies. If Earth won that battle,
the Antarians would be beaten since they would have no way to stop
Earth from sending more men and more supplies.
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the problem of saving
Hank's life. That was his habit: every time he went into combat, he
picked someone like Hank--a kid--and stuck with him. He would worry
about that kid, whoever he might be, and try to keep him out of tight
spots. It was his way of protecting himself. Whenever he worried about
his own life, his mind always froze. But worrying about someone else
was different.
"I think I'd rather die than be captured," Hank said. "I heard they
have ways of making a guy talk--ways of making a guy tell them
anything."
Murphy nodded his head in agreement. It would be better to die than to
be captured. The war with the Antarians was different from the World
Wars on Earth. Antarians were aliens and resembled lizards more than
men. There was no way for them to disguise themselves effectively and
they had no agents on Earth to learn the location of factories and
military installations. From a thousand miles in space--if one of their
ships were fast enough--they could photograph Earth's surface. Closer
than a thousand miles, rockets from Earth's interceptor system could
destroy a ship. Atomic rockets dropped from Antarian ships could zigzag
through Earth's atmosphere at tremendous speeds and fifty per cent got
through the interceptor system. But a ship containing enough fuel to
take it from Antares to Earth and back was large and unmanueverable,
and venturing closer than a thousand miles was fatal. And a photograph
taken from a thousand miles does not show factories and military
installations. Through magnification, the photograph will show rivers,
mountain ranges, land masses, and varicolored patches of land that
could be cities or _anything_. So the Antarians had been forced to hurl
atomic bombs aimlessly. Those that got through the defensive system
usually struck deserted areas.
The Antarians had only one choice: capture as many soldiers as possible
and make them tell where military targets were located. And to them,
men were an alien form of life. Their science was not adapted to the
human body; they had no drugs to affect the human mind. In the middle
of an interplanetary war, they could not spare the workers, time,
wealth, and effort to invent drugs that had taken mankind itself years
to produce. But it took them only a few minutes to make a whip....
As Murphy listened, the distant rumble of exploding shells grew in
volume. They were "walking" shells across the surrounded area. He
flattened himself against the bottom of the foxhole and covered his
ears with his hands. Even through his hands, the roar of explosions
was deafening, and he felt the ground shake while shell fragments
whistled through the air above.
That was Antarian tactics, he remembered. Whenever possible, they
surrounded an area; pounded it until there were only a few men left and
then charged with their infantry, taking as many prisoners as possible.
The roar of exploding shells diminished in volume as the barrage moved
farther away.
Silence.
Murphy checked his rifle and rose. He looked across a desolate terrain
covered with craters and smouldering shell fragments. The forest near
them--that weird forest of hundred-foot trees with green trunks and
yellow leaves--was almost gone. The barrage had left only a few trees
upright. Trees with their branches torn from them; trees that looked
like shadowy fingers pointing at the stars.
"I suppose they'll be coming now," Hank said.
"Any minute. They always follow a barrage."
"I won't surrender," Hank said as he checked his rifle. "I know that.
There wouldn't be anything to gain."
"You couldn't surrender if you wanted to."
"Huh?"
"The Army doesn't allow it. You see, the Army tells you what to do, how
to do it, when to do it, and where to do it. There's regulations in
the manuals to cover _everything_. If there aren't regulations about
something, that's because the Army doesn't allow it. There are no
regulations about how to surrender. That means you _can't_ surrender."
"Suppose you haven't got anything to fight with?"
"No dice. If you've only got one bullet, you fire that bullet. Then you
use your bayonet. If your bayonet breaks, then you pick up rocks and
throw them, and if there aren't any rocks around, then you attack with
your bare hands. In other words, you keep fighting until you kill them
or they kill you. If you surrender, you're a traitor."
Hank was silent for a while. "If that's so," he said, "why do they have
regulations about what to do _after_ you're captured? You know, that
'Give only your name, rank, and serial number' stuff."
"That," explained Murphy with mock impatience, "is for those cases when
a guy might be captured while unconscious. The Army's sensible. It
knows you can't fight if you've been knocked unconscious by something."
"Did you hear the rumor," Hank went on, "that every guy going into
combat has something done to him so he'll kill himself if he's
captured? Hypnotism or something?"
"Uh-huh." Murphy wished Hank hadn't mentioned that. He remembered,
there at Fort Hendricks, something strange had happened. Take a
battalion of men, line them up outside a hospital. One by one, as the
men enter a room, give them an injection that knocks them cold. Keep
them unconscious for days while you feed them through the veins, and
then revive them, put them in a formation and march them back to their
barracks without an explanation. Do something like that and you'll
cause all sorts of rumors. Those men will wonder what happened to them
while they were unconscious. The more they wonder, the more fantastic
the rumors will get....
"I doubt it," Murphy said. They had been whispering. No enemy
followed a barrage so close that they were killed by their own
shells, and Antarians could only move at a certain speed. That always
left--immediately after a barrage--a few minutes during which they
could talk or whisper in safety. But that time was limited and they
fell silent now.
Murphy thought, _Somewhere out there, lizard-like things are crawling
toward us. Any minute now, they'll be close enough to hear us if we
make a sound, and they'll be waiting, hoping to hear a sound. They'll
be holding their weapons with their tentacles as they move closer.
They should be in a zoo where you could see them on Sunday afternoons
and laugh. They're funny-looking, but it's hard to laugh at them while
they're trying to kill you--_
A rumble of sound.
Murphy swung his rifle, aiming through the sights. It was a tank. They
had no hand grenades, and it was impossible to knock one out with a
rifle. But, he reminded himself, he had explained to Hank. It was a
soldier's job to fight, even with rocks if necessary.
_No._ It was one of their tanks!
"Let's go! Maybe they'll give us a ride!"
They climbed out of the foxhole. Murphy ran toward the tank, raising
his arms above his head--not a gesture of surrender, but a means
of recognition. Antarians could walk on their hind legs but their
physiology did not allow them to raise their forelegs above their heads
as men could. At night, when nothing could be seen clearly, it was the
most effective password.
The tank stopped.
A voice came at them through the darkness, "What the hell do you want?"
"Got room for two more?" Murphy inquired. "Give us a ride out. We're
low on ammunition."
A moment's hesitation; then, "Get in."
Climbing into the tank was like climbing into a dark well. When the
lid closed behind them, there was _no_ light. The darkness annoyed
Murphy, but he realized it was necessary. There were no slits for the
crew to see through: slits allowed bullets, radiation, and poison gas
to enter a tank. The crew observed through periscopes that fitted tight
against their faces; they were trained to work in the dark.
It was a long, rough ride through the night. Murphy listened to the
crew members, the roar of the motor. Now and then there was the sharp
bark of the tank's cannon, and even through four inches of steel and
lead he heard the roar of shock waves from distant atomic explosions.
Hank whispered, "That wasn't right, was it? I mean, leaving like that
and--"
"Ever hear of 'strategic withdrawal'?" Murphy asked. "We'll live to
fight another day."
Murphy slept at times. One time, after being awakened by a nearby
explosion, one of the tank crew asked him his name and what unit he was
with. He said he would radio their unit and ask if their CO had orders
for them. Murphy gave his name and unit, then fell asleep again.
Sometime during the night, he felt a hand shaking him. "You lucky
stiffs," a voice in the darkness said. "Your CO says you're to return
to Earth on the next ship."
* * * * *
Colonel Donovan climbed out of the jeep and walked a distance. He was
a tall, husky man with powerful shoulders and prematurely gray hair.
His face was hard and weather-beaten, and his eyes held the only hint
of his intelligence. He did not have the delicate features and slender
fingers of an intellectual, but his gray eyes were cold and alert. He
had climbed to the rank of colonel partly by his physical strength and
partly by that deceptive intelligence. He had an aggressive way of
tackling a problem, a way of prodding it and beating it with his mind
as if it were a physical thing and he were beating it with his fists.
During his career, he had solved numerous problems with his different
approach. The intellectuals, the men who solved problems, had minds
as alike as if they had been cut from the same pattern. A definite
type of physique produced a definite mentality-type, and a definite
mentality-type produced a definite way of thinking. The intellectuals
were similar in body and mind, and their answers were often too
similar. When the UN wanted a _different_ answer, it called upon men
such as Donovan.
And Donovan had a new problem.
He lit a cigarette without looking away from the ruins. The ruins of
Fort Meade; he could see at a glance that it had been a direct hit.
Every building had been leveled, the ground scorched and fused into
weird glass-like substances. There had been no burial details: of all
the thousands of soldiers at the Fort, there had been no remains to
bury.
He had no special purpose in viewing the ruins except to goad his
mind. Reports on his desk in the New Pentagon had informed him of the
facts: seven military bases such as Fort Meade had been bombed by the
Antarians. All direct hits.
It meant one of two things. One: the Antarians could take a photograph
of Earth from a thousand miles and spot military installations on that
photograph. Two: they had tortured prisoners and learned the locations.
Number one was improbable; number two was very probable.
He wondered, _How do you prevent a man from giving information?_ It
was an important problem. There seemed to be no way to prevent the
Antarians from taking prisoners, no way to prevent them from torturing
prisoners. If they captured enough prisoners, they could learn the
location of every military base and war plant on Earth. Every soldier
knew the location of something vital; almost every soldier could point
to it on an aerial map. It was a simple matter of spotting rivers and
mountain ranges and judging distances.
The possibilities of preventing their men from talking were few, he
realized. There was the standard answer: give a pill to every soldier
and tell him to swallow the pill if he's captured. But that was
the wrong answer. It had been used before, but only in the case of
espionage agents. Used on an army of men, it would have a demoralizing
effect. It would imply that you expected them to be captured. And
what percentage of men would commit suicide? Besides that, the news
would sooner or later leak out to the civilian population and have a
demoralizing effect upon _them_. How would millions of mothers and
wives feel if they knew their sons and husbands had been ordered to
kill themselves if captured?
No, suicide pills were not the answer. It had to be something
different, something original, and as foolproof as anything could be.
Preferably a way to kill a captured soldier--a way that the soldier was
not aware of. Death seemed the only solution. Any man, tortured hard
enough and long enough, would talk. How could you keep that man from
talking except by killing him? And still, it wasn't _right_ to kill
your own men!
_How_, he thought, _can you kill a man without killing him?_
* * * * *
Hank was pacing the floor. "We're on our way, Murph. Back to Earth. No
more combat. We'll train other guys how to fight. Instructors. What a
deal! Weekend passes, girls, beer, fried chicken, real milk--"
"Lay off," Murphy said. "We aren't there yet."
Sitting there on the edge of the cot, he struggled for a sense of
reality. Nothing seemed real. Nothing had seemed real since they left
the foxhole. There everything had seemed real: the coldness and wetness
of the mud beneath them, the stars in the sky above them, a thousand
other things. But, in the tank, there had been nothing but darkness and
voices in the darkness. The tank had broken through the Antarian lines
and taken them directly to a spaceport. There, in a thick fog--so thick
that you could see only a few feet in any direction--they had boarded
the ship. In the darkened ship, they had been led to this compartment.
They had seen only two men aboard the ship. One crew member--seen at a
distance--and Gregg, the ship's captain. Now they were in outer space,
in a small compartment aboard a huge ship. It didn't seem real, and he
felt as if they were walking through a shadowy dream.
The door opened and Captain Chester Gregg stepped into the room.
Gregg, Murphy reflected, looked as if he had been taken apart and put
together again. There were lines in his face: not lines that came from
facial muscles, but the clean-cut lines of a surgeon's scalpel--lines
that divided his face into small sections. And the flesh from his
forehead to his chin did not change shade gradually. Each section was
a slightly different shade than the section next to it. Not a hideous
effect, but noticeable when you looked at him closely. Gregg was
evidently conscious of his appearance, for he stayed in the shadows as
much as possible.
Gregg glanced around the room and grinned. "How do you like your
quarters? Fancy, huh?"
"Great," Murphy said. "Almost as good as the Ritz. Are we the only
passengers?"
Gregg nodded his head affirmatively. "We had to leave in a hurry. We
were scheduled to take more men back, but the Antarians were about to
take over that port. We were lucky to get out when we did."
Gregg hesitated, then went on, "You guys are going to have a tough job
when you get back. Not as easy as you might think. I know. I was in the
infantry for a while--in a training outfit. Hard work."
He placed some papers on the table. "Here's your homework."
"Homework?" Hank repeated.
"It's the newest thing," Gregg explained. "They figure that men who've
been in combat with the Antarians can train recruits better than men
back on Earth who've never even seen the Antarians. The plan is to
train men like yourselves on the way back to Earth. No time wasted.
That is, they plan to teach you how to train others. We have a colonel
and a couple lieutenants aboard. You fill out those papers and they'll
judge your knowledge of military procedure. Then they'll know exactly
how much they'll have to teach you."
When Gregg left, Murphy examined the papers. As Gregg said, the papers
were a test of their knowledge of military procedure. There were yes
and no questions: questions such as _Describe procedure to infiltrate
enemy lines_, _Describe procedure for establishing night patrols_,
_Describe alternate code system_. Hundreds of questions.
And an aerial map. The question: _Give the approximate location of Fort
Johnson._ And in small print at the bottom, the notation that this was
a test of memory and ability to judge distance.
"Look at this, Hank."
Hank studied the map and question. "That's easy," he said. "I was
stationed at Fort Johnson. There's Salt Lake. See? Fort Johnson is
about--"
"I said _look_, not _talk_!" Murphy rose and glared at Hank. "You're
stupid," he added.
"What's the matter with you?" Hank inquired, his jaw sagging.
"You're stupid," Murphy repeated. "Don't you ever question anything?
This whole thing smells fishy." He paced the floor, glaring at the
metal walls. There was something wrong with the compartment. It was
like any compartment aboard any ship, but there was something _wrong_.
He knew there was something wrong, but he couldn't pinpoint it. "It
doesn't make sense. We were in a foxhole a few hours ago, and now we're
on a ship headed for Earth. It doesn't make sense."
"We're going to be instructors."
"And that map is fishy," Murphy continued. "That's the sort of thing
the Antarians would want to know. They have to photograph Earth from a
thousand miles out. They'd like to know exactly where Fort Johnson is."
"Well, so what?"
"So _what_? Hasn't it occurred to you that maybe we're prisoners of the
Antarians?"
"Are you serious?" Hank inquired. "How can we be prisoners?" He glanced
around the room and shrugged his shoulders. "We were picked up by one
of our own tanks and--"
"The Antarians capture our tanks now and then. It could have been a
trick."
"Our own men were aboard the tank!"
"We didn't _see_ them. It was too dark inside the tank to see anything."
"We heard them," Hank insisted.
"That doesn't mean anything." Murphy remembered that they had been
warned about Antarian "talkie" machines. The Antarians frequently
tricked or forced a prisoner to talk for hours. The conversation was
recorded, broken down according to individual sounds and recorded
in a "talkie" machine. The machine resembled a typewriter, and an
Antarian could reproduce any vocal sound by pressing one of its keys. A
skilled Antarian linguist could use one of the machines and carry on a
conversation with perfect English. They had been used during attempts
to infiltrate their lines at night but, Murphy realized, one _could_
have been used in the tank.
"Take it easy," Hank said. "You're imagining things. We're on one of
our own ships!"
"Are we? What have we seen of this ship except the corridor and this
compartment? It could be.... Well, this compartment could be like a
stage. It was so foggy outside, we couldn't see anything."
He paused to light a cigarette and continued, "Gregg gave me the idea.
I've seen Gregg before--at Fort Meade. I remember him but he doesn't
remember me. Of course, that's natural. You meet a lot of guys in the
army and you can't remember them all. But Gregg was in the Infantry
like he said, and now he's a ship's captain. Our Army doesn't work like
that. The Infantry doesn't take a man and train him to be a spaceship
captain! That's the sort of thing the Antarians would do. They have a
screwy theory about their soldiers being versatile."
Hank's eyebrows rose; there was a trace of doubt on his face. "We're
here," he said nervously. "We can hear the ship's engines."
Murphy listened. True, they could hear a ship's engines. "Could be a
recording," he said.
"If there's a possibility, maybe we shouldn't talk so damned much."
Hank rose to his feet, frowning. "If you're right, they may have hidden
microphones."
"What's the difference?" If they were prisoners, Murphy thought, there
was no reason to keep the Antarians from knowing that they knew.
There would be no chance to escape, no way out. Antarians took their
prisoners far behind their lines. A man, a creature who walked upright
on two legs, could not disguise himself and pass unnoticed among
creatures that resembled lizards and crawled on four legs. No, if they
were prisoners they would be well behind the lines; there would be no
way to escape. _But_, he wondered, _if we're prisoners, why are they
trying to keep us from realizing it?_ They had used a trick to get
information, but they could have gotten the same information through
torture. He knew: he was brave enough to die for his country, but not
strong enough to--
_What's wrong with this compartment?_ he interrupted the chain of
thought. There was _something_ wrong with the compartment. He could
sense the wrongness. But what could be wrong with cots, a table, four
walls, a ceiling, and a floor? There was nothing wrong with them, so
that meant there was something wrong that was not in the compartment;
a something that came in to the compartment from outside. _What_, he
thought wildly, _is not in here but comes in here from outside?_
"_I've got it!_"
Hank jumped, startled. "What?"
"Vibrations," Murphy said. "There aren't any!"
Hank shrugged his shoulders.
"It's important," Murphy said. "Remember the troopship that took us to
Antares? I remember I had trouble sleeping because of the vibrations.
Every ship has vibrations. The engines kick up one hell of a fuss and
the vibrations travel all over the ship. Not so bad in some places, but
you can feel them anywhere."
He pressed his hands against a wall. Hank, some of the color draining
from his face, did the same. "See?" Murphy inquired. "There are no
vibrations. We're supposed to be in outer space, headed for Earth.
_There should be vibrations!_"
He hit the wall with his fist.
He hit it harder.
The wall didn't sound _right_.
Taking his bayonet, he jabbed the wall. The blade cut through a thin
layer of metal--a layer of metal no thicker than a sixteenth of an inch.
Laughing wildly, he cut a large rectangle; the section clattered to the
floor, exposing a layer of wood. He kicked at the wood--dry, crumbling
wood that gave way beneath his foot.
He climbed through the opening.
Hank followed him.
* * * * *
Colonel Donovan studied the papers before him with blank eyes. Lately
the Project had started to annoy his conscience, and the fact that it
was a logical move did not lessen the annoyance. There at Fort Meade,
he had faced the problem: How can you keep men from giving information
when captured? It had been a vital problem. Without a solution, the
Antarians could have learned countless military secrets and ultimately
won the war. Death had seemed the only solution, but it had not seemed
right to deliberately murder their own men. He had asked himself: How
can you kill a man without killing him? And he had come up with the
answer: Drive him insane.
They had placed him in charge of the Project, and he had organized
a group of psychologists, psychiatrists, chemists, doctors, and
sociologists. He had asked them: Can you install the seeds of
schizophrenia in a soldier--seeds that will bloom upon the realization
that he is a prisoner of the enemy and _only_ upon that realization?
The answer had been "Maybe"--and they had started on the Project.
The system had been developed after months of research and experiment.
It worked through a combination of surgery, hypnosis; psychiatric,
encephalographic, and chemical treatment. All given to a soldier while
under drugs and hypnosis.
Although the originator of the system, no one had told him exactly how
it worked. In such matters, it was the army's policy not to tell anyone
who did not _have_ to know. And, not being a scientist, he would not
have understood all the mechanics if explained to him.
But he had a vague concept: A soldier realizes that he is a prisoner
of the enemy, and the realization triggers a reaction planted in his
mind. A reaction placed there by surgery, hypnosis; psychiatric,
encephalographic and chemical treatment. The reaction forced the
soldier into a schizophrenic dream--entirely separated from the world.
A tight, permanent dream dissociated from all sensory perception. A
dream that not even Antarian whips could reach.
And it annoyed his conscience: he was responsible for the insanity of
thousands of their men. He could not help feeling that perhaps, if he
had tried harder, he could have thought of another way....
The door opened and Phillips burst into the room in his customary
manner. He threw some papers on Donovan's desk. "Our new project," he
said. "A tough one. Impossible, I should say."
While Donovan glanced at the papers, Phillips slumped in a chair
and lit a cigarette. "The Antarians have made a counter-move," he
explained. "We found a way to prevent them from torturing prisoners and
getting information, but our system depends upon the realization by a
soldier that he _is_ a prisoner. The Antarians learned that and now
they have a new approach. They use our tanks that they've captured and
pretend to be our troops while they trick information from our men.
You see, our men have the treatment, but they don't realize they're
prisoners, so the treatment doesn't work. Our new project is to find a
way that our men will realize they're prisoners despite any trickery."
He shrugged his shoulders as if the problem were a tangible thing and
he wished to thrust it aside. "Anyway, the war is almost over and the
Antarians are losing. I don't think it'll make any difference whether
we find a solution or not. The war will probably be over before--"
He hesitated when he noticed Donovan's expression. "What's the matter?"
he inquired. "You look sick."
"Nothing."
Phillips nodded his head. "I get it. The same old stuff. Your
conscience is bothering you again." He leaned back in the chair, placed
his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. "You're foolish
to let it bother you. You know what happened to me yesterday? On the
way home, I had a flat tire. It was raining, muddy as all hell and I
messed up my last clean uniform. The tire was ruined--now I haven't got
a spare and can't buy one because of this damned war. My wife's sister,
Louise, is staying with us now. Her husband was killed on Antares and
she cries all night, every night. Now and then, she gets Martha crying.
Last night I couldn't stand it so I went out and had a few drinks. I
got charged with drunken driving, and when I got home this morning, I
really caught it! Martha's talking about getting a divorce. She says
I--"
Donovan groaned. "Phil. I'm interested in your problems. Someday we'll
sit down together and cry on each other's shoulder, but--"
Phillips raised a hand. "I was trying to illustrate how we all have a
hundred big and little troubles every day. The fact that the system
prevented thousands of men from being tortured does not matter to
you. Your stupid conscience hurts because you're responsible for
driving men insane. But you don't understand. It's not a simple case
of schizophrenia that our men get. It's a schizophrenic _dream_. The
system blocks all sensory contacts and speeds up the mind. You know
how a person dreams only a few seconds before he wakes up and that
dream seems days or weeks long? Can you imagine how much a dream can be
speeded up and clarified by drugs, how much a dream can be controlled
by hypnotic suggestion, how much experience can be--"
* * * * *
Murphy saw that they were on a street, the tall, angular shadows of
strange buildings all around them. He heard a shuffling noise and
turned to see Antarians crawling toward them.
_They were prisoners!_ For some reason, the Antarians had kept them
from realizing it and--
A brief, intense pain ripped through his skull. He closed his eyes for
a few seconds, then opened them....
The Antarians were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets. There at
the end of the street--_their troops!_
He looked up at the sky. There were no blinking pinpoints of light
among the stars. The war was over! They had won!
The years that followed were good ones for Murphy. Although he had
never written a line before, he wrote a novel about his war experiences
and it became a best-seller. He went to Hollywood when a motion picture
producer purchased the story and, unbelievably, became an actor. He
had never considered himself a handsome man but millions of viewers
considered him handsome and beautiful women were attracted to him.
He married and became the father of two children. Life seemed like a
dream ... a perfect dream in which, day after day, year after year,
everything was perfect....
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